A couple of months ago I wrote a post about potentitally destructive effects of EU “support” on Romanian beekeepers (with a followup on the overall effect of EU “support” in Romania). This morning I came across two more videos (on a thread at permies.com) on the subject of bees. More pertaining to the subject of [...]
Category Archives: Bee Keeping
A few Euros from the EU
Yesterdays post on bees and the EU has turned into a much appreciated debate with Sam. He has responded generously. My reply/comment was long … almost a post, so I am reposting it here for the sake of archival continuity. My main point is that the EU subsidies are not really supporting Romanian farmers but [...]
The EU Strikes Again: Bees
Sam sent a link to this article and video about Romanian nomadic-bee-keepers. The short articles describes how UK bee-keepers have experienced a difficult year (meaning drastically reduced yields) and they are angry that the EU is supporting bee-keepers in Romania and Hungary instead of coming to their rescue. It also includes a nicely shot video [...]
Bees: the end of the beginning
Yesterday we finally took the last step in welcoming our bees to Bhudeva. I was working (making great progress) on the mobile chicken shelter when Andreea noticed that outside the first hive we had already transferred to a top-bar-hive there was heightened activity. We can’t be sure but it looked like the bees may have [...]
Bees Take 2
Following the difficult first hive transition we chose a (supposedly) softer approach with the second bee-hive. We adopted Phil Chandler’s approach of a natural migration from a standard hive into a top-bar-hive. I started with an idea for a kind of apron-adapter which would enable us to mount the existing hive directly onto the designated [...]
Bee Week
One of our intended projects for this spring was to get started with bees. One reason is that we consume a lot of honey so it made financial sense to pay once for getting started with bees and then enjoy our own honey for the rest of our lives. Another reason is that bees play [...]
Sudden Explosion in Bhudeva Residents
It’s almost 10pm and we just got back from a long day – we just arrived with two bee families. I don’t have much capacity to write … but did feel compelled to put out this one image of the two temporary bee-hives. The coming days we are going to bust with completing their new [...]
We Lost One Beehive
Yesterday while I was chopping wood outside on a surprisingly warm February day (of which we’ve had quite a few) Andreea called from far away Bucharest. She asked me to look in on the hives, she felt the bees calling for help. A few weeks ago we listened to the hives (but didn’t open them [...]